Friday, February 28, 2014

Jerry Brown's Reelection Bid Suffers From a Lack of Imagination and an Absence of Social Responsibility

Some years back, in his
inaugural address, Governor Brown described how “through the turmoil of
change, and sometimes chaos, Californians have pressed on toward the good
society—not for the few, not for the many, but for all”. In his address he focused on infrastructure,
social welfare, and education, remarking that California’s “public schools have
begun shoring up their curricula to meet the stern demands of an age in which
the only public cost greater than education is ignorance.”. He went on to describe a “bold program to
duplicate in ten short years a tuition-free system of higher education which
already is the best in the world”.

An inaugural address with such progressive aspirations very likely sounds
rather strange and unfamiliar to most Californians, and so it will undoubtedly
make sense to learn that it was not Jerry Brown, our current Governor, who
delivered that address, but rather his father, Pat Brown, in 1963. Pat Brown helped to engineer California’s
social welfare network, bits of which endure. He promoted higher education and K-12
education in the state, and emphasized a communitarian mode of politics in
which all members of society were asked to contribute in keeping with their
success to the welfare of society as a whole.Jerry Brown, by contrast, in his most recent tenure as Governor, has been a
major proponent of dismantling the state his father helped to build. Propelled by his ambitions, lack of
imagination, and a fanatical Republican Party minority, Jerry Brown subjected
the state to a blistering round of cuts, launching an opportunistic attack on
the public sphere which dwarfed the efforts of his Republican predecessor,
Arnold Schwarzenegger. Having hamstrung the public sphere, Brown pushed Prop 30, an initiative which
he billed as a “fix” for education in the state, but which really did nothing
more than slap a band-aid on the gaping wound inflicted by the Governor
himself. Brown has no aspirations for
California, and talks ceaselessly of limiting our ambitions and finding ways to
short-change our public sector. When pressed
on whether the state would seek to live up to its obligations to its public
universities by restoring funding, Brown referred to state funding as a “bailout”,
likening our state’s students to Wall Street titans.On Thursday, Brown
announced that he will run for re-election in 2014, which would give him a
fourth term governing California. His
announcement comprised a list of “accomplishments”, but curiously, many of
these “accomplishments” involved him making some amends for the problems he
generated with his cuts. Brown is like a
mugger, who takes $50 from his victim and then asks for praise when he returns
$10. Brown, largely by dint of out-lasting the competition with his
chameleon-like political maneuvers which today leave him governing like a faux
populist Tea Party Republican, has built up a considerable reservoir of trust
with voters and the media
(particularly that outside of California).
Some
long-time California commentators are predicting an historic landslide for
Brown.And yet Brown has chosen to do very little with this mandate. All Californians would benefit from systematic
political reform: the democratization of our voting system; the elimination of
supermajority rules; the roll-back of propositions which deny Californians the
right to make choices about their society; and the empowerment of our governing
structure, which today operates under voter-imposed constraints which prevent
our government from actively addressing voters’ concerns. Brown could choose to run on an ambitious platform which could transform our
state’s capacity for self-government and restore principles of democracy and
equality to a society increasingly dominated by elite interests and money. Instead, he’s running on a self-contradicting
policy grab-bag designed to appeal to diverse constituencies without accomplishing
anything of significance. He is
promoting fracking while eliminating the regulation that could make the
technology safe. He’s pushing a bullet
train while ignoring the ailing existing transit system, and declining to
tackle the state’s incapacity to fund such a large-scale project. He’s pushing a model of “fiscal
responsibility” which makes the working class pay the price for the anti-social
behavior of the wealthy, and allows our public institutions to become
casualties of a broken system of government which he refuses to address.Progressive voters, dissatisfied with Brown’s refusal to address the growing
inequality and gap in access to public institutions in the Golden State will
have no alternative candidate in the general election thanks to the state’s
undemocratic Top Two primary system, which will see Brown and one of two GOP
fundamentalists advance from the June election to the November ballot. I will vote in the election, because there
will be other offices sought by responsible candidates, critical initiatives,
and much at stake at the federal level.
But I will probably leave my ballot blank when it comes to voting for a
Governor, because a choice between a fundamentalist and a fundamentalist who
pretends to be progressive is not much of a choice.Pat Brown was not a perfect Governor, and progressives and right-wingers
alike could find much to critique about his tenure. But he did not give in to the temptation that
has beguiled his son: to back away from the dream of a fair society by building
up poll numbers while preaching about the need for introducing cruelty,
inequality, hardship, and social demolition in our state. In his second inaugural Pat Brown declared that “We are here to prove that a
civilization which can create a machine to fulfill a job can create a job to
fulfill a man”, pointing out that all Californians want much the same thing: “A
productive life in harmony with neighbor and nature— [which] will not be
wrought in our lifetime … But here and now we can put our hands to good work.
What we do here may not have its full impact on our own lives. Our children and
their children will be the better judges of what we do. They will measure our actions by the security
of the lives they live; by the wisdom they acquire; by the way they invest
their leisure; by the quality of the very air they breathe”.

By such metrics, Jerry Brown’s cynical campaign is very much
lacking. He should take the opportunity
to make his final tilt at high office about something more than chasing a
margin of victory. He should think a bit
longer about what he could do in his campaign to introduce a greater degree of
democracy, equality, and social responsibility into our civic sphere and
governing structure, and thence into the state he aspires to govern for a
further four years.

About Me

I am from Northern California, and am the fifth generation of my family to have lived in the Golden State. Now I live next-door in the Silver State, where I research and write about colonialism and decolonization in Africa, teach European, African, environmental, and colonial history, and write this blog, mostly about politics, sometimes about history, and occasionally about travels or research.